Almost all my friends are just people I know online.

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It sounds so sad.. I usually can deal with it, because its literally all I've known. When I was in school- I had a few friends but we drifted apart. Currently I have my significant other and one other friend. The other friend is usually busy. So I literally have just online friends to chat with and play games with sometimes. I would be happy with a few more real life friends, but I just don't see it happening. I've tried and tried. I'm not a very social person in public. I know not to "give up" but its so rough. :/

Most of my friends are people online too. What's more, I'm more honest with my online friends than I am with my friends in real life.

In the past to years, ever since moving back to my childhood smalltown, most of my friendly social interactions have been online. I've frequented message boards, like this one, I was very active in a chatroom, and I maintained a blog (which I have since deleted, started a new one but that didn't go anywhere.)

There were many evenings that I'd come home after work, and just spend hours chatting in the chatroom, about everything and nothing. I felt more appreciated on my online venues than in the real world.

While I have once more achieved a bit more of a balance between online and offline interactions, I still have no friends, and no frequent contacts in my phone list or mailbox. I'm not sure if it will ever change as long as I live.

I had two acquaintances in the early 2010s. I hung out with both a couple of times, but decided I preferred long stretches of being entirely alone, so I kept postponing the next meet-up until they both got sick and moved on.

If you want to change it, I'd say it's best to think about what you'd like to change and what you would expect from a possible friendship, and also what's hampering you in attenpting to establish such friendships. Some people feel comfortable in seeking contact based on mutual interests.
As for the friend you currently have infrequent contact with; it could help to reach out to them and plan some activity on a date when they're not busy. The thing is that often we think that a friendship will just keep going strong even if we don't see each other that much, but the truth is quite often that relations get less close when we're out of sight.

I had afew friends at school & work but they weren't a lot. I had a lot more friends online thou but I don't really have any online at the moment & wouldn't mind having some more if anyone is interested. I have one offline friend in addition to my girlfriend but I moved across the country to be with my girlfriend who I met on this forum & I only been seeing him 1ce a year for the last few years. We do text some but it's not a lot.

I know how it feels when there's pockets of my life that I do not have any friends.

To some extent I don't even appreciate online friends

I am pretty much a closed book , so its hard for people to read me in real world.

However now I am actively making new friends, and keeping/maintaining them such as dropping them warm mobile message and asking them for coffee to catch up with their lives. (yes remember its about them , and not you) Its near impossible to move them from the friends category to good friends or best friends.

So for my strategy, because I prefer 1-1 , I'll try to make as many new friends on that basis and hopefully something in common to talk a bout. So if you have maybe 10 such friends, keep rotating them in a couple of months and thats your new social life.

I have zero real-life friends. It's been this way since I was about 18 or so.

I guess that's why you call yourself 'Yigeren' (one person).

Yes, it means "one person" or "alone" or "by oneself". It's pretty accurate to describe me, I guess. Been studying Mandarin for the last few months.

Be thankful for the friends you have online and off, it's not something everyone has.

I try but it's rough. Especially when many of these "friends" don't talk to me much. In the era of the internet and digital age we are in... so many people add others to friends lists then never even talk to them. I keep my friends list on Skype (and so on) small, but the percent that talks to me is still low.

Sometimes just taking a break, where you take the opportunities that come but mostly try to relax, is good. That's what I'm doing now because my life is so unpredictable and it's hard to keep bumping into people my age. I still have fun online and try to connect beyond just being in the same game together, getting people to have fun and helping them make progress in games. At some points it's kind of like "training" to be a little more relaxed and curious with people I like.

my real life friends outside of family, would be my bi-monthly square pegs aspie meetup group. they satisfy my needs for fellowship with real people in real time in real space. short of that, I have WP and FB. it is a LOT more than I had before I discovered any of those things, I was basically isolated amongst people who were totally dissimilar to me in countless ways, a stranger in a strange land, for almost 5 decades of living, until I discovered WP and square pegs when I could finally interact with people who were similar to myself.

^I'm glad you're around, Blabby, you're a great guy and it's good to know you can feel 'at home' here on the forum.

I would go as far as saying there is no shame in only or mainly having friendly and meaningful interactions with people online. Maybe it's viewed as weird by the vast majority of people, but I think the internet has opened up opportunities for people who would otherwise have a very hard time establishing contact with others.

Last edited by CyclopsSummers on 04 Mar 2016, 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

YAY! vice-versa too!

I wonder if VR will make a difference here. I could literally go online and feel like I am physically hanging out with other people if I could see my own and their VR bodies and interact with the environment. I think it would feel less overwhelming compared to real life, but still close enough that I felt like I was actually with other people. Without any of the bother of travelling around in public, which sometimes is enough by itself to put me off socialising.

It would also mean I could 'hang out' with online friends even if they were on the other side of the planet. I'm pretty excited for VR (once it really gets going). I think it will make a big difference to socialising, for me at least.

I have WAY more online friends than real-life friends. Despite my best efforts, I haven't found the large amounts of red-life friends I've always wanted.